A week’s vacation

First I went on a three-day guys’ trip with a cou­ple gents I’ve known for 35 years and count­ing^[1]Not sure how that’s pos­si­ble and then I joined my mom, my sis­ter, my broth­er-in-law, my niece, and my dar­ling wife for the rest of the week.

Spruce Woods

I met Craig at Cadet camp, and I met Ray in his first (my sec­ond) year of uni­ver­si­ty. We camped (along with Craig’s broth­er Cur­tis) in Spruce Woods Provin­cial Park.

We hiked the Spir­it Sands, a not-quite-desert land­scape of sand dunes and scrub…

…and at night the skies were very dark, as Spruce Woods is a dark-sky preserve.

We had long con­ver­sa­tions around the fire, too.

On the way home I dis­cov­ered a field of sun­flow­ers, so I stopped for a few photos.

Wasagaming

Mid­week, after we’d packed up at Spruce Woods, I joined up with the fam­i­ly camp­ing already in progress at Wasagaming.

My niece pro­duced some amaz­ing chalk art (includ­ing a pan­icked last-pos­si­ble-minute bike ride to town for more blue chalk) on the road.

I got a few more pho­tos of the night sky, though Wasagam­ing’s not quite as ded­i­cat­ed to darkness.

We enjoyed some amaz­ing gela­to, wan­dered around the paths, failed to see any bison, snored in an Oten­tik, played some wild card games (includ­ing a six-hand­ed vari­a­tion on crib with time loops and penal­ty box­es), and had a great old time.

And now I’m home. Tomor­row will be laun­dry day, I think. Every­thing kind of smells like a campfire.

Inter­est­ed in prints of my pho­tos? Let me know, and we can work some­thing out.